I apologize for the extremely stupid title.
To me, Bundy is the most fascinating known serial killer. For True Crimers that's kind of like saying your favorite band is the Beatles, but I yam what I yam.
I'm a big true crime fan, I rewatch The Staircase every year, I re-read Helter Skelter every other year , I am constantly hunting for new crime podcasts, I've listened to "The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher" possibly six times. I don't know where this urge comes from. I wonder sometimes if it's a way of dealing with an innate fear of death and chaos by making those seem like problems that have happened in the past and can be solved.
Bundy is probably the killer who I find myself most haunted by. Because Manson, whatever he was, he seemed to be that consistently. It was word salad & drug orgies, all day, everyday with Manson. Whereas Bundy siloed his evil urges so completely. He was a polished, princely, kind, politically motivated achiever who spent hours talking people through emotional crises on a suicide hotline, and a depraved murderer and rapist who specifically enjoyed watching the light go out of people's eyes as he killed them and would act out sexually on his victims remains until they literally disintegrated.
So while Manson seems like an offshoot of the 60's to me, Bundy becomes more relevant with every passing year. He is a haunting bell weather for the increasingly psychopathic tilt of our culture; that total divorcing of the presentation of self and authentic self that social media is such an engine for, the triumph of conformity in masking evil.
Below is Bundy's murder kit. The arrest that ultimately lead to his apprehension came when he was pulled over and the officer noticed the passenger seat of his car was missing so decided to search the rest of it and found this. Bundy claimed he was moving & this was a load of random objects.
